Smoked Cheese: A How-to Guide
On January 17, 2023
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Smoked cheese is the perfect snack, sandwich addition, or flavor booster to pasta or soups. I’ll teach you how to smoke cheese so you can replicate this gourmet product at home!
Smoked Cheese
Smoked cheese is typically only seen at high-end grocers or specialty stores and it comes with a price tag. Luckily, if you’ve got any type of grill at home, you can easily recreate those expensive results over and over again with fantastic results. Plus, you get to have a lot of fun doing it!
Keep in mind that smoking your own cheese at home will take some extra materials or equipment, and there’s a bit of waiting/resting time involved. But if you’re willing to put in the time and effort, you’ll end up with the most amazing, homemade smoked cheese around.
Materials Needed to Smoke Cheese
Here’s what you’ll need to smoke cheese:
- An outdoor grill. Any variety will do. You don’t need a super fancy or expensive grill to smoke cheese!
- A cool day. You do not want to be smoking this cheese when the temperature is hot outside. The internal temperature of your grill needs to stay well below 90 degrees F.
- A smoke tube. This will help you infuse your cheese with all that amazing smoky flavor.
- Wood pellets. As far as smoke, I prefer using mild wood varieties. My favorites are apple, cherry, maple, or pecan.
- Parchment paper.
- Vacuum sealer. This last item is not necessary but highly recommended to help your smoked cheese last as long as possible.
Best Cheese for Smoking
Feel free to choose your favorite cheese to smoke, though I do recommend hard or semi-hard cheeses for smoking. Soft cheeses have a tendency to take on too much smoke flavor, as well as giving you trouble keeping them from falling through your grill grates.
My favorites are a nice cheddar, hard mozzarella, pepper jack, and gouda. Any of these take on smoke beautifully. I recommend you purchase the large blocks and cut them down into 2-3 inch bricks. Once you feel confident with your technique and flavor profiles, you can branch into more expensive cheeses!
How to Smoke Cheese
Let’s get down to the entire process now, shall we? Here’s how to smoke cheese.
- Select a grill. Select an outdoor grill or smoker to smoke your cheese. You won’t be turning on your grill as a heat source, it’s simply acting as the vessel for holding your cheese and keeping the smoke flowing around it.
- Light the tube smoker. To make your grill into a cold smoker, light a tube smoker inside the grill. There are different sizes and varieties, but I find I get the most use out of this tube smoker because it lasts long enough but doesn’t take up a lot of space. Light the tube smoker according to the manufacturer’s instructions and place it in your smoker. Make sure the flame is extinguished and the smoke is rolling.
- Smoke. Arrange your cheese on the grates, making sure they aren’t touching on the sides and there is airflow around each piece of cheese. Close the lid and smoke for 1-2 hours.
- Refrigerate. Once your cheese is done smoking, remove it from the grill and wrap it in parchment or untreated butcher paper. Refrigerate for 24-48 hours.
- Vacuum seal the cheese. Remove the cheese from the paper and vacuum seal the cheese. If you don’t have a vacuum sealer, place it in a zip-top freezer bag and get out as much air as you can. Label and date the cheeses.
- Refrigerate for 2 weeks. Place your sealed bags in the fridge for 2 weeks. If you sampled some of your cheese right after smoking, you will taste really smoky, almost acrid, cheese. As it sits in the fridge, that smoke flavor will distribute throughout the cheese and mellow out significantly.
- Enjoy! After 2 weeks, your cheese will be lovely and ready to enjoy.
How Long to Smoke Cheese
There is no hard and fast rule for how long to smoke cheese. You can leave it on the smoke anywhere from 30 minutes to over 2 hours depending on how smoky you would like the final product.
If you want lighter smoke flavor, leave your cheese on the smoker for around 1 hour. Personally, I like to leave my cheese on for about 2 hours. I find that it takes on enough smoke flavor without becoming overwhelming.
More Smoked Cheese Recipes
Whether you’re looking for other smoked cheese recipes, or you need some inspiration on how to use this gorgeous, new smoked cheese coming off your smoker, check out a few suggestions below!
Smoked Cheese Recipe
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This post was originally published in December 2018. We recently updated it with more information and helpful tips. The recipe remains the same.
Smoked Cheese
Video
Ingredients
- 16 ounces block of cheese cut into small blocks
Instructions
- Select your grill. The grill for this smoked cheese isn't preheated, you're simply using it to cold smoke the cheese. Be sure to use a grill that has good ventilation and one that you can easily track the temperature inside the grill. You do not want the temperature to go above 90 degrees F.
- Light the tube smoker. Light the tube smoker according to the manufacturer’s instructions and place it in your smoker. Make sure the flame is extinguished and the smoke is rolling before you place the cheese on the grill.
- Smoke the cheese. Arrange the cheese on the grill grates. For best results, make sure they aren’t touching on the sides and there is airflow around each piece of cheese. Close the lid and smoke the cheese for about 1 hour for a lighter smoke flavor or 2 hours for a bolder smoke flavor.
- Wrap and refrigerate. Once the cheese is done smoking, remove it from the grill and wrap it in parchment paper or untreated butcher paper. Put it in the fridge for 24-48 hours.
- Seal tightly. Remove the cheese from the paper and vacuum seal it. If you do not have a vacuum seal, place the cheese in a zip-top bag and remove all the air before sealing tightly.
- Refrigerate and rest. Once the cheese is sealed, place it back in the fridge for 2 weeks to allow the smoke to distribute through the cheese and mellow.
- Enjoy. After that 2 week resting period, you're ready to open up that cheese and enjoy it however you please!
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Do I need warm temps to smoke cheese? Temps around here are a little below freezing, is it ok to leave cheese to cold smoke for a few hours like this or do I need the 70-80 deg range for best results?
I live in a cold climate as will it’s about -10 or so, I have a Bradley smoker in a small shed, I just hang my cheese from the roof while I’m smoking meat, the temperature is below 0 inside the shed and the cheese taste great. I leave the cheese there until the meat is ready, sometimes longer.
It’s always turned out great.
I wrapped my smoked cheese in parchment paper and then heard we needed to wait a couple of weeks to let it do it’s thing. I unwrapped it today and the edges are all hard and crusty I like cheese set out and dried out. What should I have done differently?
Only leave it in the parchment paper for 24-48hrs, and then vacuum seal it for the rest of the waiting period.
Where can we find 1 lb (or so) blocks of cheese such as Gouda and Mozzarella?
A lot of larger grocery store chains have pretty decent cheese counters now. I usually grab them there.
I’m in the middle of my second weekend of smoking cheese. My goal was to give them as holiday gifts. I’m curious about packaging them. After a day in parchment paper in the refrigerator, I have vacuumed sealed the cheese without the parchment paper. I understand the sealed bag provides the greatest longevity for the cheese but am left thinking how unattractive it is in terms of presentation. Is there any negative effect vacuum sealing the cheese wrapped in the parchment paper? The only other way I can think about doing it would be to just wrap the vacuumed sealed cheese in parchment paper for better presentation. Any thoughts on achieving the greatest presentation for the cheese.
There shouldn’t be any issues with that!
We are going to do the same … shrink wrap & then wrap in the butcher paper for presentation.
I have done that vacume seal in the paper
Do we just use your peach paper to wrap it in for the 2 weeks?
You absolutely can!
I’ve been smoking cheese, salmon, ribs, steaks, and other meats for about 10 years. For most hardcore cheese smokers aging cheese for two weeks is the very minimum you should wait. And I am talking if you a desperate to eat some. I and many experienced smokers always let my cheese age a minimum of 4 weeks, even six weeks for even better taste. Depending on the type of wood, I smoke mine for up to 5 hours.
Thank you very much. I have been looking all over the Internet for recommended times and found your comments to be very helpful.
I have heard the rule of thumb is one week of resting for each hour of smoking
Hello Just ordered a smoker tube on Amazon. What is the (mat or screen?) that the cheese is sitting on in the grill?
Can’t wait to try your instructions.
Thanks!
It’s just a common stainless steel cooking rack!
Love your article. I smoke the cheese in a Pit Boss vertical smoker and use a 6 inch smoker tube with apple pellets. 1st attempt smoker got too warm and cheese melted a bit. Now I put about an inch of water in a foil pan and freeze over night. temp stayed under 80 degrees & no melting issues. Hard to wait for 2 weeks. Thanks for your tips.
Thank you for your Info/site. I am new to cold smoking in England (UK). I am using mild cheddar over oak. First small block, smoked for about 3 hours. rested on a rack for a few hours. Wrapped and refrigerated. Tested after 3 days. Very good.
Will keep on tasting every day to get the right relaxation/mellowing time.
I’ve smoked extra mature cheddar with hickory pellets & must say I really found it difficult waiting to give it a taste. When the day arrived to taste it wow do I like it I pretty much did it by the suck it see method. After I had read your very useful guide, the advice it is almost the same process that I did mine. I’ve just purchased my next blocks of cheddar but I am going to use apple pellets this time. I would absolutely recommend people give it a go it’s not difficult to do & the rewards are very yummy.